Whenever I need a mask I also prefer kabuki tape ones. Thank you for sharing the experiment!

The plane looks very nice with the masks off and the nav-lights added.

Main Landing Gear in Place

I'm going to back up here a bit and address something I forgot to mention prior to painting and attaching the flaps. The kit flap parts come with thin actuating rods already attached. Believe me, these will break off immediately so cut these guys off right away and get it over with. I dug out their re-attachment points a bit with a knife so the rods would have something to stick to later on. By the way, this kit is designed for the flaps to be posed in the down position only.

Once the flaps were glued in place, I cut some short pieces of .64mm Evergreen rod with 45º cut ends and glued them to replace those I had previously cut off and tossed away. I painted these aluminum. E-Z! As you can see in the next photo.

Now the main landing gear is now in place, after knocking off all the little fiddly parts I had already attached in the process. Lesson learned - add this stuff at the end of the build!

Now I have a BIG problem. The support arm strut part that holds up the front nose gear disappeared on me. Could be due to a brain fart or that darned carpet monster again. I'm sure it will turn up. If not, I will have to scratch build a replacement.

@coling - I find those tiny plastic salsa cups with lids that they hand out at taquerias and pizza huts work great for storing parts and you can use a Sharpie on the lids. I know exactly what you mean about finding that missing part as soon as you go to all the trouble to make a replacement. Never fails.

Great work, Eric @eb801.
Those final stages of modelling are critical ones, especially for those fragile parts.
Hopefully the carpet monster is friendly enough to hand the piece back to you.

That's great, Eric! So glad you found it. Now you can get this one done properly with nothing to slow you down.

A successful rescue mission, Eric @eb801

Amazing so far, my friend @eb801!
Bays look wonderful!

Weapons Loaded

I am slowly working on attaching the weapons payload to the pylons. Kinetic's instructions are useless providing no clue where the central plyon goes and also the kit's two TER racks or any weapon locations so some internet research is required. Kinetic provides no bombs or LAU's, so I used Hasegawa's aircraft weapons set A & B. It's slow going here to get things just right and not wipe out the landing gear in the process. Hasegawa's racks were not designed to fit the Pucará but with a little ingenuity, I made them adapt close enough. I still have three more Mk 82's to attach followed by hooking up the bottom fuselage antenna. Getting closer to the finish line now. Nothing to point out or whine about as this kit does go together smoothly from the get go.